Tom Dreyer's Equatoria: "The tenuous metaphysic of existence"Karen Jennings - 2008-10-21 Title: EquatoriaAuthor: Tom DreyerTranslated by: Michiel HeynsPublisher: Aflame BooksISBN: 9781906300012Publication date: October 2008Pages: 164Click here to buy Equatoria from kalahari.net now! Tom Dreyer's Afrikaans novel Equatoria, which debuted in 2006 to great critical acclaim, has recently been translated into English by Michiel Heyns and published by Aflame Books. The novel is set in the year 1912 and is the fictitious account of two Englishmen, Willis Reed and Guy Nichols, who have...

Ingrid Wolfaardt’s Heartfruit: “The land is not his land”Karen Jennings - 2008-10-14 Title: HeartfruitAuthor: Ingrid WolfaardtPublisher: Human & RousseauISBN: 9780798149938Pages: 456Click here to buy Heartfruit from Kalahari.net now! The twentieth century is considered by many to be the most terrible century in Western history. Categorised by the overwhelming presence of the will to dominate and dispossess, it is a century marked by war and violence, poverty and displacement, on a scale previously unknown. While it is Europe that suffered most during both the period that spans...

Prose as sharp as needles: Mike Rands’s Praise Routine Number 4Mike Nicol - 2008-10-14 Title: Praise Routine Number 4 Author: Mike RandsPublisher: Human & Rousseau (Pty) LtdISBN: 9780798150033Publication date: August 2008Pages: 296Click here to buy Praise routine number 4 from Kalahari.net now! Another reviewer of Michael Rands's debut novel, Praise Routine Number 4, called it "angry". I didn't find it so much angry as gleefully, savagely satiric. Rands is out to attack everything and everyone he can - there are no holy cows, especially not those belonging to...

The One That Got Away: Zoë Wicomb engages with elusive storiesDW de Villiers - 2008-10-02 Title: The One That Got Away (Short stories)Author: Zoë WicombPublisher: UmuziFormat: PaperbackPages: 190ISBN: 978-1-4152-0052-0Click on the cover of the book to order your copy from Kalahari.netHistory and identity, we have established beyond any doubt, are complex matters. Yet they ask to be encapsulated in some way, and they inevitably acquire a particular shape and meaning as we engage with them. Such "definition" may be afforded by manifestos and official histories, sociological...

The One That Got Away: Zoë Wicomb engages with elusive storiesDW de Villiers - 2008-10-02 Title: The One That Got Away (Short stories)Author: Zoë WicombPublisher: UmuziFormat: PaperbackPages: 190ISBN: 978-1-4152-0052-0Click on the cover of the book to order your copy from Kalahari.net History and identity, we have established beyond any doubt, are complex matters. Yet they ask to be encapsulated in some way, and they inevitably acquire a particular shape and meaning as we engage with them. Such "definition" may be afforded by manifestos and official histories, sociological...

A "quiet mark of human work" – Julia Martin’s A Millimetre of DustKaren Jennings - 2008-09-17 Title: A Millimetre of DustAuthor: Julia MartinPublisher: Kwela BooksISBN: 9780795702631Pages: 288Click here to buy A Millimetre of Dust from kalahari.net now! With threats of global warming escalating and the end of the world ever more imminent, documentaries such as An Inconvenient Truth, films such as The Day after Tomorrow and books such as Pulitzer Prize-winner Cormac McCarthy's The Road have gained increasing resonance. Finding that the future of the planet and, more significantly, the...

The boarding school days: Paul Murray reads Cheesecutters and GymslipsPaul Murray - 2008-09-16 Title: Cheesecutters and GymslipsAuthor: Compiled by Robin Malan, with a foreword by John van de RuitPublisher: UmuziISBN: 9781415200605Pages: 208 Publication date: June 2008Click here to buy Cheesecutters and Gymslips from kalahari.net now! Boarding school can mean different things to different people. Some cherish the memories, while for others it was hell on earth. Yet there are very many stories to be told from the experience of boarding school, where just the thought of leaving home at...

Love in the archiveHedley Twidle - 2008-09-09 Title: Claim to the country: the archive of Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy LloydCompiled by: Pippa Skotnes Publisher: JacanaISBN: 9781770093379Publication date: May 2007Click here to buy Claim to the country from kalahari.net now! Pippa Skotnes and the /xam go back a long way. Claim to the Country is "the result of a twenty-year love affair with an archive," she writes in the introduction, and if the story of Wilhelm Bleek, Lucy Lloyd, //Kabbo and his kinsmen is by now a familiar one, this...

Isigingc' asakh' umuzi - “A guitar does not build a homestead."Hedley Twidle - 2008-08-29 Title: In township tonight! Three centuries of South African black city music and theatre (Second Edition, 2007) Publisher: JacanaISBN: 9780226115672Pages: 455Click here to buy this book from Kalahari.net now! Masakanda and marabi, isicathulo and isicathamiya, ndhlamu and ndunduma, famo and focho, tsaba-tsaba and patha patha - the glossary of In Township Tonight! – gives a sense of the countless dance steps, guitar riffs and vocal styles which are lovingly detailed in David Coplan's...

Guilty PleasuresHedley Twidle - 2008-08-27 Title: Omnibus of a Century of South African Short StoriesAuthor: Introduced and edited by Michael ChapmanISBN: 9780868522333Publisher: Jonathan BallDate: April 2007Pages: 900 Click here to purchase your copy of the Omnibus of a Century of South African Short Stories from kalahari.net now! Faced with this brick-like anthology, and too daunted to traverse the huge cultural distance between ancient oral narratives and the modern short story in strict chronological order, one can conduct...

Judging moths: Poppy Adams’s The Behaviour of MothsAshlee Polatinsky - 2008-08-19 Title: The Behaviour of MothsAuthor: Poppy AdamsPublisher: PenguinISBN: 9781844085125Publication date: May 2008Pages: 320Click here to purchase The Behaviour of Moths from kalahari.net now!Lepidoptera appear in a surprising range of novels and essays. It’s easy to understand the literary imagination’s attraction to butterflies, which embody the idea of spectacular transformation: the voracious, tubular caterpillar emerges from its chrysalis into fragile, bright-winged beauty, an associate...

Lions lie down with the sheepAndrew Brown - 2008-08-13 Title: Shepherds & ButchersAuthor: Chris MarnewickPublisher: UmuziISBN: 9781415200445Publication date: May 2008Pages: 352Human beings can be differentiated along many different philosophical lines: one obvious example is between those who believe in the existence of a god (or who believe that the existence of such a god may reasonably be debated) and those who do not (and know that to enter into such a debate is futile, as one cannot square rationality and faith up against each other and expect...

Trencherman: Venter's Anatomy of Visionlessness in TranslationDawid de Villiers - 2008-07-28 Title: Trencherman (Originally Horrelpoot)Author: Eben Venter; translated by Luke StubbsPublisher: Tafelberg, 2008Format: PaperbackPages: 321ISBN: 978 0 624 04651 6Click on the cover of Trencherman to order your copy of the book from Kalahari.net.In a (near) future, Martin Jasper Louw, or Marlouw, a clubfooted emigrant selling cookware in Melbourne, is saddled with a grim task. His nephew, Koert Spies, has gone back to the former family farm in South Africa, and Marlouw's sister, Heleen, has asked...

Christopher Hope’s Garden of Bad Dreams one of the best short story volumes in a long timeKarina Magdalena Szczurek - 2008-07-10 Title: The Garden of Bad Dreams and other storiesAuthor: Christopher HopePublisher: Atlantic BooksPublication date: May 2008Pages: 132ISBN: 978-1-84354-772-3Price: R210After suffering through the pretentiousness of Christopher Hope’s last novel, My Mother’s Lovers, I was very apprehensive about reading his next book, but The Garden of Bad Dreams is a delightful collection of stories which surprises and sparkles on every page. The first and titular piece sets the thematic tone for the...

A Doggy Dog WorldHedley Twidle - 2008-07-08 Title: Notes from a Fractured Country: Selected JournalismAuthor: Jonny SteinbergPublisher: Jonathan Ball PublishersISBN: 9781868422937Pages: 240Click on the cover of Notes from a Fractured Country to order your copy from kalahari.net.Farm murders in KwaZulu-Natal, the prison gangs of Pollsmoor, AIDS in the Eastern Cape – nobody can accuse Jonny Steinberg of shying away from all that is most disturbing in South Africa. In Midlands (2002), The Number (2004) and the forthcoming Three-Letter Plague,...

Whiplash will get you thinkingBeryl Eichenberger - 2008-07-04 Tracey Farren’s debut novel is going to hit you between the eyes! Ex-journalist now full time writer, Farren has approached this novel in a quirky and unforgettable style. Raw, gritty, funny and with a rhythm that takes you from the staccato edges of prose to the poetry of an exotic rainbow, this is a story that takes you on a journey from soul destroying horror to spiritual awakening. Of redemption for a lost soul who walks the streets for a living to quite simply, a resurrection.There is...

Lovely beyond any singing: Landscapes in South African WritingMargie Wilson - 2008-06-30 I fell in love with South Africa, the country of my birth, all over again when I started reading this book. It is filled with the most beautiful images of our glorious country. Helen Moffett has done a superb job in putting together the picturesque prose and poignant poetry of our best writers and poets. From the introduction to the last page contains gems of the best South African writing, drawn from well-known names such as Alan Paton, Dalene Mathee, Rustum Kozain, Wally Serote, Athol Fugard, Finuala...

Dark Continent My Black Arse: Sihle Khumalo doesn’t mince words on his journey from Cape to CairoFred de Vries - 2008-06-17 Dark Continent, My Black Arseby Sihle Khumalo ISBN: 9781415200360Category: TravelPublisher: UmuziRRP: R130Click here to find out more about the bookClick here to purchase Dark Continent, My Black Arse from kalahari.net now!It’s surprising how rare black travel writing is. Therefore, as Zakes Mda aptly remarks on the back of Sihle Khumalo’s Dark Continent My Black Arse: "This is just the book we have been thirsting for: travel writing by an African adventurer who explores and tries...

For the Sake of Silence: A novel with atmospheric appealKarina Magdalena Szczurek - 2008-05-05 For the Sake of Silence by Michael Cawood Green Publisher: Umuzi ISBN: 978-1-4152-0045-2 Category: Fiction RRP: R250 Click here to find out more about the book Click here to purchase For the Sake of Silence from kalahari.net now!
Apart from its beautiful cover image and an intriguing title, Michael Cawood Green’s For the Sake of Silence is not the kind of book which would usually attract my attention....

The Light Echo by Stephen Watson: a dense collection of the heart of beautifully crafted poemsJanet van Eeden - 2008-03-27 The Light Echo and other poemsStephen WatsonPublisher: The Penguin Group (SA) (Pty) Ltd ISBN: 9780143025535 Format: Softcover Publication date: 2007/8 Click here to order your copy from kalahari.net!As I am reading Stephen Watson’s sixth collection of poetry, The Light Echo, a memory comes to me of a time when, as a child, I would sit in the backseat of my father’s car as we drove to Durban from the Free State. I loved staring out of the car window as the landscape flew past my sleepy...

At the crossroads: fiction (and) or realityZoleka Nduvane - 2008-03-13 Holy Hill by Angelina Sithebe
ISBN: 9781415200407 Category: FictionPublisher: Umuzi
Click here to purchase Holy Hill from kalahari.net now!
It has not been since Ben Okri’s the Famished Road that I have read a story about a believable connection between the human and spirit worlds; not since Alice Walker’s Colour Purple or Toni Morrison’s Bluest Eye that the theme of the female body as a site of violence has been so palpable; and not since Charlotte Brontë’s...

Fine Lines from the Box: further thoughts about our countryAnnie Gagiano - 2008-02-18 Fine Lines from the Box: further thoughts about our countryAuthor: Njabulo S NdebeleISBN: 9781415200377Publisher: UmuziPublication date: 2007/09Format: Trade paperbackPages: 268“A turning point in my life occurred when I discovered a treasure trove of banned books in my father’s garage” (9), is how Njabulo Ndebele’s latest essay collection (1987-2006) begins. This is a keynote comment, since the impetus for the entire collection is to some extent the undertaking to keep on...

Denis Hirson’s Gardening in the Dark: Connections that transcend time and spaceJanet van Eeden - 2008-02-18 Gardening in the DarkAuthor: Denis HirsonISBN: 13: 978-1-77009-384-3Format: PaperbackPublication Date: 2007/12Published by Jacana MediaWhen is poetry prose? When is nostalgia not self-indulgent? When is personal self-reflection a universal experience? These are the questions I asked myself when reading Denis Hirson’s latest book of poetry, Gardening in the Dark. I will do my best to grapple with answers to these questions. Denis Hirson’s book consists of four sections. Section one contains...

Ja, No, Man: Darkly witty memoir with a conscience Lauren Beukes - 2008-01-25 Ja, No, Man: A memoir of pop culture, girls, suburbia … And Apartheidby Richard Poplak ISBN: 9780143025498Penguin SATrade PaperbackR160
Growing up in South Africa in the '70s and '80s was a kak time for everyone, but certainly more so for black kids who had to deal with an inferior education system, entrenched racist national policy, violence, political protest and violence disguised as political protest.
When those experiences read like a raw map of grief and oppression, the travails...

After Tears: A brave experimentationSam Raditlhalo - 2008-01-16 After TearsNiq Mhlongo
ISBN: 978-0-7957-0256-3Kwela Books, Cape Town (2007) Softcover 256 pp R125
Niq Mhlongo’s After Tears follows three years after the publication of his debut novel, Dog Eat Dog (2004). The main character, Bafana Kuzwayo, is a University of Cape Town student who discovers on November 22, 1999 that he has flunked almost all of his final-year law degree courses and decides to leave Cape Town for Soweto. Thus the action moves swiftly to Soweto’s Chiawelo township,...

Leopard’s Leap Review: Unconfessed by Yvette ChristiansëSue - 2007-12-19 The only fiction in this novel is the fact that it will not leave you untouched. (paradox) A lie is always disguised in a truth and the truth may just as well be a lie and that none of that really matters in the end … for it will also end … or does it really? Sila was brought into this world by the pen of Yvette Christiansë, as a child, and left to our world in the beginning of the 1800's. Sila the child, Sila van Mosbiek, Sila the young woman (protected by her kind), Sila, (unprotected)...

Paul Murray takes a look at the Nuwe Geskiedenis van Suid-AfrikaPaul Murray - 2007-12-12 Nuwe Geskiedenis van Suid-AfrikaHermann Giliomee and Bernard Mbenga (eds)TafelbergISBN-13: 9780624043584464 ppIllustrasies 600 +Hardeband met stofomslagR299
Herodotus’s The Histories in nine books is considered by historians to be the inaugural work of history in Western literature. Written in 440 BC, in the Golden Age of Classical Greece, it tells the story of the war between the Persian Empire and the Greek city states of the 5th century. Accounts from interviews by the author(s) and the...

Life Class: Exploring life against a backdrop of warArja Salafranca - 2007-11-27 Life ClassPat BarkerISBN: 9780241142981Hamish HamiltonTrade PaperbackR160
Pat Barker is the author of the well-known First World War trilogy Regeneration, which was made into a film of the same name. Clearly that era holds a fascination for the 1995 Booker Prize-winner, as she returns to that war and those times in Life Class.
It’s 1914 as the novel opens in Henry Tonks’s studio at the Slade School of Art. Paul Tarrant is frustrated by his seeming lack of ability as an artist. He...

William Kentridge Flute: A book to be savoured and returned toHazel Barnes - 2007-11-07 William Kentridge
Flute
Edited by Bronwyn Law-Viljoen, 2007
David Krut PublishingVisit the David Krut Publishing Bookstore.
This beautifully produced book attempts to capture in print the concepts explored through the projections created by William Kentridge for his production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute and for Black Box / Chambre Noir, the work which developed out of his engagement with the opera. The ephemeral nature of these performances is arrested and framed here for scrutiny...

Paul Murray reviews Springboks on the Somme: South Africa in the Great War 1914–1918Paul Murray - 2007-10-31 Springboks on the Somme: South Africa in the Great War 1914–1918
By Bill Nasson
Publishers: Penguin Books SAPublished: September 2007ISBN: 9780143025351Pages: 300Price: R180Click here to buy your copy from Kalahari.net.
In seven years' time, if not before there, will be a great amount of literature appearing in commemoration of the outbreak of one of the most gruesome events ever recorded in history, the First World War. Springboks on the Somme: South Africa in the Great War 1914–1918...

Antony Altbeker's A Country at War with Itself is bound to challenge you to re-think the crime crisis in South AfricaJameson Maluleke - 2007-10-24 A Country at War with Itself: South Africa's Crisis of CrimeAuthor: Antony AltbekerPublisher: Jonathan Ball (Johannesburg: 2007)ISBN 978-1-86842-284-5Click here to purchase your copy from Kalahari.net.
Polemicist and crime researcher Antony Altbeker is probably the only South African at the moment who has successfully managed to have the crime pandemic prioritised on the national agenda.
A patriotic South African and a crime victim who loves his country, Altbeker felt so strongly...

"They are all the same, these men, and it is best to nip them in the bud.” Review of Ceridwen Dovey’s Blood KinMeg Samuelson - 2007-10-23 Blood KinAuthor: Ceridwen DoveyISBN: 9780143025306Publisher: Penguin (SA)Format: Trade PaperbackPrice: R160 Click here to purchase your copy from Kalahari.net.
This fabulist tour de force marks Ceridwen Dovey’s astonishing debut. I doubt that any southern African writer has delved into the functioning of power with as much intensity and insight since the masterly reflections of Bessie Head and JM Coetzee; Dovey’s is a potent new voice on the southern African literary scene.
Set in...

Narrating Our Healing: Perspectives on Working through Trauma - a profoundly admirable achievementAnnie Gagiano - 2007-10-10 Narrating Our Healing: Perspectives on Working through Trauma Written by Chris N van der Merwe and Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela Published by Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007 ISBN 9781847182081Order this book directly from the publishers at www.c-s-p.org.
Narrating Our Healing is a good book in the widest sense of that adjective: it is well constructed, meticulously researched, and likely to deepen understanding of the difficult but profoundly important subject of trauma and how...

Leopard's Leap Booklover's Reward: The Family Arsenal by Paul Theroux Travis Lyle - 2007-10-03 You want a good book to curl up with, just as winter shakes off its last drops? Look no further than Paul Theroux’s The Family Arsenal, a brooding thriller which crosses and double crosses London in such a manner that you’re left marvelling at the author’s skill.
Set in the dour days of 1970’s London, The Family Arsenal is that rare bird: a thriller which never gets too dense with plots and sub-plots and maintains a modicum of comedy, enough to save the reader from the instinctive...

Ojaide sings The Tale of the Harmattan from Cape Town Dike Okoro - 2007-09-26 Absorbing, startling and uncannily pitched to public and private issues that penetrate the social climate and upheaval of present-day Nigeria and Africa might be the best way to describe prolific Nigerian scholar-poet, Tanure Ojaide’s new poetry collection, The Tale of the Harmattan. The book is published in South Africa by the prestigious Kwela Books of Cape Town, which parades a coterie of some of Africa’s already established poets and fiction writers, such as Eskia Mphalele, Nuruddin...

Sam Raditlhalo hails Cion as Zakes Mda's finest artistic achievement. Read whySam Raditlhalo - 2007-06-21 Zakes Mda Cion Johannesburg, Penguin, 2007ISBN: 978–0–02542–9386 pagesR154 (for June: R120 at kalahari.net)
The South African novelist Zanemvula Kizito Gatyeni "Zakes" Mda continues to ride the wave of novelistic fortune that began in 1995 with the publication of two of his novels, She Plays with Darkness and Ways of Dying (Oxford). His fifth novel, The Whale Caller (Penguin, 2006), is an accomplished artistic tour de force that has been described as "his finest...

Amazulu: In the Time of Shaka KaSenzangakhona, King of KingsPaul Murray - 2007-04-13 Amazulu: In the Time of Shaka KaSenzangakhona, King of Kings
Author: Walton Golightly
Normal price: R195.00Publisher: Kwela BooksISBN: 9780795702402Format: SoftcoverPublication Date: 9 April 2007Click here to purchase your copy now.
Amazulu retells the story of Shaka's rise to power. It is not meant to be an academic history of the life and times of Shaka Zulu. It is a popular history. As do all writers of their books, Golightly wants his book to be read, and in the course of the process...

A case for The Heavens May FallMathilda Slabbert - 2007-03-21 The Heavens May FallUnity DowPublisher: Double Storey ISBN: 9781770131033 Format: Softcover Price: R141.95
Unity Dow’s fourth novel, The Heavens May Fall (Double Storey), is an elegant, perceptive and evocative piece of literature that explores the sensitive topic of women and child abuse. Dow, a human rights activist, is the first female High Court judge of Botswana. The themes of the novel are firmly embedded in the familiar ground of her profession, her stances on women and children’s...

Courage under fire in the MotherlandDike Okoro - 2007-02-05 The Activist
Tanure Ojaide
Farafina Books (2006) Price: N1000 324 pp
ISBN: 978-074-578-3
www.kachifo.com
Celebrated Nigerian poet-scholar Tanure Ojaide fires a salvo by bringing us The Activist, a provocative novel that articulates to readers the irony of oil exploitation in modern Nigeria. This exhilarating tale, rich with local and universal issues, weaves historical facts with sophistication and passion in telling the story of its nameless protagonist, the Activist. Reminiscent of...

The Battles of IsandoDeji Olukotun - 2006-12-13 Room 207By Kgebetli MoelePublisher: Kwela BooksISBN: 0-7957-0234-5Pages: 256Format: Soft coverPrice: R140
Viscerally gritty, Room 207 follows the lives of a half-dozen talented black men as they risk everything to become artists, musicians, poets, and schemers in Johannesburg. These men cry alone. They party hard, drink hard, and smoke Jah for inspiration.
The setting is Hillbrow, Dream City, the tough port of entry for people looking to make it big in the new South Africa. The neighborhood...

Die Prins: Du Toit’s Afrikaans does justice and pays tribute to a great writerPaul Murray - 2006-11-16 Die PrinsBy Niccoló Machiavelli
Afrikaans translation and commentary by Delamaine du Toit
Published by the translator, DAH du Toit:1 Longkloof StreetHout Bay 7806
Dr Du Toit has translated true to the Machiavelli text and has rendered it possibly even more readable than the Italian. The commentary on each chapter, at the end of the text, greatly facilitates an understanding of the work. Much time has therefore been taken to render it "reader friendly" especially for those...

Books in BriefMichelle McGrane - 2006-10-17 Borrowed Light (fiction)by Joolz DenbySerpent's Tail (2006)ISBN 1-85242-905-4
"My name is Astra Selene Sharp, I have great teeth and I read a lot. Jesus, I suppose that sounds a bit odd, the teeth bit, but you see it does tend to be what people notice about our family and compliment us on." Denby's quintessentially northern English protagonist drops out of university to take care of her family after her mother is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. At twenty-seven she still lives with her...

We are everything, yet we are nothing. Paul Murray reviews Michael Fryan's The Human TouchPaul Murray - 2006-10-16 The Human Touch: Our part in the creation of the universe
Written by: Michael Fryan
Publishers: Faber and Faber; 2006Pages: 704
This is Fryan’s twelfth book, over and above one opera, fourteen plays and his writings for film and television. He is well known for his plays Donkeys’ Years and Noises Off.
The Human Touch: Our part in the creation of the universe continues to ask questions about our relationship with the universe we live in. Whilst Fryan holds that the world is what...

''In sleep, my sister and I found a common breath. In dreams, we knew the moon.''Michelle McGrane - 2006-09-18 The Girls
by Lori Lansens
Virago (2006)
ISBN 1-84408-365-9Click here to buy your copy from Kalahari.net
Canadian screenwriter Lori Lansens's best-selling first novel, Rush Home Road (2002), has been published in eleven countries and translated into eight languages. Shortlisted for the Canadian Booksellers' Association Libris Award as Fiction Book of the Year (2006), Lansens's second book, The Girls, is again set in southwestern...